Obesity

New study findings may flesh out chemical influences

From culture to religion, social status to political leanings, a lot can be learned from what's on a plate. In What I Eat: Around The World In 80 Diets, photographer Peter Menzel and his wife, writer Faith D'Aluisio, take a fascinating look at diets of people around the world.

What causes obesity? Advertising junk food to kids? Cheap soda? The demise of physical education in public schools? Too much screen time? Or maybe, it's one of the little boxes in this Obesity System Influence Diagram, developed in 2007 by British researchers for their government's Foresight Project: Holy cow, I believe are the words you're [...]

Today, up to 25 percent of people in the U.S. are living with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), according to the American Liver Foundation.

I’ve always found gyms a bit strange. Think about it: Dozens of people sweating in close proximity, running on conveyor belts going nowhere, lifting and dropping heavy objects for no reason.

In what has been dubbed "The Great Crawl of China", in August 2010 commuters in Beijing accumulated along a 74.5-mile-long stretch of road for a preposterous 11 days straight.

A roundup with an emphasis on round

Increased consumption of sugar, fats, and a more sedentary lifestyle have led to rising levels of obesity in the United States and parts of Europe.

Gout sends almost 4 million people to the doctor’s office every year. If you are overweight, drink alcohol, or are under treatment for high blood pressure, you are at risk. But what is it and how can you prevent it?

Science and common sense are alike grounded in human experience. Yet these ways of thinking about things are often in conflict. Sometimes the simplicity of most commonsense explanations can make it hard to win people over to the complexity and uncertainties of most scientific arguments.

1.   Um…   And yes, this is actually a thing.

I find it ironic that Thanksgiving coincides with American Diabetes Month. In honor of that irony, two recently published studies have suggested a possible link between what you eat, how it impacts the behavior of the microbes living in your gut, and type II diabetes.